The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2)

by Heidi Joy Tretheway

  He nuzzles my ear and his hand on my stomach begins making long strokes up and down my abdomen, from between my breasts down below my navel, each time drawing the spiral tighter. I’m more keenly aware of his presence, his drawl, his scent, like late summer grass and leather.

  “Talk to me.” Jared’s voice is a gravelly command.

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” I hate that I’m stonewalling him, about not one but two secrets. But I’m Charlie Brown waiting to kick the football that Lucy will pull away—each time I’ve reached for him, begged for him to give me something more than the promise of the short term, he’s stopped us short.

  He’s pulled away the football.

  And with it, my security that I can tell him everything, give him all of me, and he’ll be there.

  For better or for worse.

  For richer or poorer.

  For whatever the hell disaster is coming at us next.

  Jared’s hand snakes down my thigh, finding the hem of my nightshirt and climbing back up my stomach, this time on my bare skin. His thumb brushes the outside of my breast and my nipples harden. His breath on the back of my neck sends a shiver through me.

  He pulls me closer and I feel his erection through his pressed trousers, the crinkle of his starched shirt rolled to his elbows, dark hair on his arms curling from beneath the cuffs.

  “If you won’t talk to me, be with me.” Jared’s whisper is heavy with desire, his hands move more insistently as they find the apex of my thighs, my damp panties betraying my want. “Just let it go.”

  I freeze as he touches me, feeling like an imposter in my own bed. Feeling like I’m betraying him as I let him touch me without knowing.

  I have to tell him.

  “Stop.”

  Jared’s hand freezes over my folds, then he rolls my shoulder so my back is on the bed and he can get a good look at my face. “What is it?”

  His eyes are dark, indecipherable.

  “I just can’t … right now, there’s so much…” I’m at a loss for where to begin. “I just can’t right now.”

  “You can’t have sex?”

  “No. I mean yes.” I shake my head in frustration. “It’s complicated.”

  Jared pulls back from me until he’s sitting up on the bed and the physical rift between us feels like a chasm. “Darlin’, complicated is the tax code. It’s the budget and Social Security. It’s foreign policy and the IMF. But we”—he wags his finger between our faces—“are not fucking complicated.”

  “We are,” I whisper.

  “The hell we are.” Jared’s rage builds. “We are about the most perfect and good thing there is in Washington. You get that? You don’t want to have sex? Fine. I get that. I can get over that. It’s a hell of a lot better than you faking what you don’t feel for me. But don’t you tell me we’re complicated unless we truly are.”

  He’s breathing hard and so am I. His wary eyes narrow. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No. God, Jared, I’m fucking this up,” I cry.

  His surly expression remains, but this time his arm comes around me and he pulls me against his chest. He threads his fingers through my hair, long combing strokes that make my scalp tingle and my pulse quiet.

  I take a few hiccupping breaths and then I begin. “Before I tell you, I have to know what you want us to be in the future.”

  “I told you, sweetheart. I want you now. That’s as much future as anyone gets in Washington. The only thing’s certain is that whoever’s in is gonna be out in a few years.”

  “That’s a shitty answer.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  “What do you want? You want me to tell you how this election is going to turn out? Because no one can predict that. You want me to say how we’ll end up afterward, or after a year or ten? I can’t promise or predict that either.” The brittle mistrust in his rough voice returns. “Your guess is better than mine, considering I’m even more out of the loop when you shove me out of a closed-door meeting with Shep like I’m some junior volunteer.”

  The hurt in his voice is blistering, meant to leave a mark. I see and feel it now. Jared’s angry that I’m shutting him out from my conversation with Shep and the meeting with my mother.

  My lover touches me with shaky hands that barely rein in his self-control, his urgent need to push me to the brink physically arrested by my one word—stop.

  This is the man I gave my body and heart to just a few months ago. And now I don’t wonder why he’s cagey about giving me promises for the future when I can’t even give him truth in the present.

  “I want to tell you,” I begin. “But I didn’t know how you’d react and I was afraid you’d …” Leave me. Hate me. Never trust me again. Never want me again.

  “Stop.” Jared’s hand in my hair gives an extra tug to make sure I’m listening. “I want you to tell me, but tonight, stop.”

  “But I—”

  “Seriously, woman? I’m bailing you out of this and you’re fighting me on it?”

  I almost laugh with relief, but now I’ve gathered my courage and I’m ready. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say, ‘Thank you, Jared. Let’s go to sleep. And I love you.’”

  I roll toward him and place a soft, deliberate kiss on his lips. His stubble tickles and I relish the contradiction between his whiskers and soft lips. “I do.”

  ‘I do’ is for wedding vows. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health.

  I clear my throat and repeat, “I do love you.”

  “And the other stuff?”

  “Thank you, and let’s go to sleep?”

  Jared sighs and flops dramatically back on the pillows. “Finally! The woman listens to me. She can be taught.”

  I crack up and tickle him until I force him to sit up and strip off his work clothes. He slides between the sheets in his underwear and resumes his big spoon hold, but his erection presses against me and tells me his body has other ideas.

  We breathe in silence and darkness for a few minutes, listening to traffic, the click and hiss of my icemaker, the sound of the furnace whooshing on.

  “Are you really OK with just sleeping?”

  “If you’d actually sleep.” His voice is a rumble, already fogged with sleep, but his hands weave through my hair again.

  “I promise, I’m trying. I was just worried.”

  “No need, darlin’. This isn’t the end of our talk, but it’s the end for tonight. You know what you do with a beautiful woman if you can’t make love to her?”

  “What?”

  “You hold her. And you thank God that at least you’ve got that much. Because with you, tonight is enough.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “We’ve got problems.”

  Sasha Heller greets me with a sour face and Trey pushes a paper cup at me. I check the side where the order is written—grande hazelnut latte. Damn. I’ve already used up most of my caffeine allowance for the day.

  “Thanks, Trey.” I sip, then turn to Sasha. “What’s the problem?”

  “Problems.” She emphasizes the plural. “First of all, your mother is a piece of work. Although I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. You know she got a call from Gloria Alton?”

  I nod.

  “Then you understand probably better than I do how bad she could make you look. She hinted that they’ve made an offer.”

  “Ten thousand.”

  Sasha’s brows barely twitch. “Shit. Level with me: How bad could it be?”

  “Very.”

  “Like dropkick-the-campaign-now?” Trey asks. “Or hide-out-for-a-few-news-cycles?”

  My face pinches. “Maybe somewhere in the middle?” I give them a thumbnail sketch of an issue I skirted during Jared’s initial vetting. It’s true I didn’t smoke pot more than a few times in high school, but it’s also true that I was suspended for dealing it.

  “I know it’s cliché to say it, but it wasn’t my pot. I didn’t point
the finger at the dealer because he was a friend. He would have been expelled for his crappy record, but since my record was pretty spotless, I got off with a suspension.”

  “Your mother doesn’t believe your side of the story?” Trey asks.

  “Of course not.”

  Sasha curses. “I could coach her, but I pretty much guarantee you that woman will not stay on message. Next to her, you look like a wind-up doll.”

  “At least you know going off-message runs in the family,” Trey quips, and I nudge him with my foot. Smartass.

  Sasha tips her forehead, a silent touché, and then regroups. “I’m going to leave it to you to decide how to manage that. If you can talk her out of it, do. If you can’t, pass her to me, OK?”

  I nod my assent. I’m ashamed to dig myself into a deeper pit of shame by admitting my mother’s demand for money. I just need to scrape together cash and send her home, quickly and quietly, praying she doesn’t pay another visit to this gravy train for a while.

  “Next problem.” Sasha’s already moving on. “We’ve got more news outlets asking for credentials for your speech at Washington High and we were able to move that speaking gig up to the morning so you can get to the fundraising dinner in LA. Charter flight.”

  I let out a breath. Shep heard me out when I insisted that I couldn’t miss my commitment to Trey. “That sounds more like a solution than a problem.”

  “The problem is, you don’t have your speech ready yet. And we’re already behind on prepping you for the vice presidential debate.”

  I hold up my hands. “Wait. One thing at a time. I’ve been working on the speech. I should have it ready by the end of today.”

  Sasha eyes me, clearly unsure if I’ll really deliver. “You swear?”

  “Cross my heart.” I make the motion. “I’ll be ready by Wednesday.”

  “Thank you for this,” Trey says quietly. “I know it’s totally not what they’ve planned for you.”

  “It’s what we planned, Trey. You and me. Before Shep entered the picture.”

  Sasha frowns. “You need to be looking at the bigger picture. Not writing speeches. Not handling the little things.”

  “This is not a little thing!” I huff. “If I just go by your agenda, I’m not going to be sticking to mine.”

  “My agenda is getting you elected. I’m in your corner.” Sasha nods to Trey. “He understands that.”

  Trey purses his lips and stands, breaking some of the tension in the air. “Why don’t I leave you two alone to figure out what you’re going to do?” His phone pings with a text and he glances at it. “I’m going to do an errand.”

  I raise my brow. “An errand that starts with a J and ends with an O-E-L?’”

  A smile tugs at Trey’s mouth. “Maybe.”

  “Good for you. Go do it.”

  Trey grins at me and grabs his jacket, leaving me and Sasha in the office alone. But it’s not for long. My legislative staffers filter in within a half hour and we move to my inner office to go through the schedule, the new meeting requests, and the press clippings that are piling up about the Conover-Colton ticket.

  “These are the issues that are going in your favor.” Sasha ticks off gun control, environmental policy, cyber privacy, and family-law issues including marriage equality and parental leave. Then she flips a page in her file and starts reading the issues where I’m at the greatest risk: immigration reform, international trade, Social Security and fiscal policy.

  “The Republicans can crush you on this. Are you ready for this debate?”

  I sit straighter in my chair. “Yes. I’ve been studying this for months.”

  “Studying is not the same thing as a substantive debate. And you slipped during the Alton interview.”

  “Slipped how?”

  “You used a hot-button word we agreed you wouldn’t. Relationship. And you’ve never named your date, or lover, or whoever that man is. They’re going to kill us on family values, no matter how squeaky clean Shep is. They don’t want a whore in the White House.”

  Her words knock me back hard, like a slap in the face, and I redden with anger. “Don’t you dare use that language with me.”

  Sasha’s lip curls into a calculated smile. “You see what I mean? You’re not ready. Here you’ve got me, someone from your own team, getting your blood pumping with a few simple words. How do you expect to keep your cool during a debate?”

  I close my eyes and force a slow breath out my nose. She’s right. Of course she’s right. I’ve had little experience in debates beyond some bland Portland City Club-hosted events for my congressional campaigns.

  Like just about everything, competing on a national stage is night and day from my grassroots campaign experience.

  “You’re right,” I whisper.

  “You need to prep. Trey gave me your sheets of rude questions and they’re good, but they’re not enough. I set up a screen test for you this afternoon.”

  “Screen test?” I’ve done dozens of on-camera interviews. “Like an audition?”

  “Do you know that during the Nixon-Kennedy debate for the 1960 election, the people who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon won, but the people who watched it on TV thought Kennedy won?”

  I shake my head. Of course I don’t know that. Jared’s the one who studied public policy in grad school, while I was busy digging into Supreme Court rulings in law school. My required reading rarely ventured into political history or communications.

  “What’s your point?” I ask her.

  “The point is that you’ve got to be brilliant on camera. Not just good. You made a couple of faces during the Alton interview that weren’t your best look. I want to show them to you, coach you out of them. I want to work on your timing. We’re going to nail your body language so you look like the most natural person in the room.”

  ***

  “It feels like acting lessons.” I’m frustrated, watching Sasha play back tape. The screen is paused on a particularly unflattering expression as my brows knit and a deep wrinkle creases my forehead.

  Why have I never seen that wrinkle in the mirror in the morning? Next thing I know I’ll be sprouting a dozen more gray hairs.

  “It’s only to help you act more natural. Help you connect with people.”

  I bite back a strong dose of cranky and keep listening. Off-camera, Sasha’s voice asks me a pointed question on health-care reform and offers two negative options. I see myself pause a beat, then use a bridging statement.

  Sasha clicks the pause button. “Did you see what you just did there?”

  “Reframe? I changed the context of the question.” My face betrays my confusion, because that’s what I’ve been taught to do.

  “Stop listening to the words. Use your eyes. Use your sense of rhythm.” She rewinds a few seconds, then presses play again.

  I hear the question, then see my neck move slightly before I reply. “Is it the pause when I swallow?”

  “That’s part of it. There’s a cadence you’ve got to listen for,” she says, then plays the clip again. “When you’re asked a question with a positive response, you need to give a longer beat, draw out the suspense of the moment so the audience listens more closely. Smile, or step slightly to the side of the lectern. But if you’re asked a negative question, you want to dropkick it. Just plow right in and keep your words as short and boring as possible.”

  “Short and boring. Got it.”

  Sasha holds up a finger to indicate a caveat. “But no soundbites. Short words, but ramble a bit. Make your sentence structure longer. Interrupt the thought with a side comment. That makes for rotten replays.”

  We go through the rest of the tape, take by painful take, question by question, and I scribble on the notecards she used to grill me. This time, most of my notes are style and not substance. I feel like I’m selling out.

  But I want this. Oh, hell yes, I want this. And the person growing inside me is even more reason that I want to change the world for good.
<
br />   Sasha finally lets up with her play, pause, critique cycle when it’s close to dinnertime and flips off the monitor.

  “Are we done?”

  “For now.” She eyes her phone, looking at the time. “I’ve got a dinner tonight and you’ve got the rest of a speech to write.”

  My mouth drops open. “How do you expect me to write a speech when we’ve been doing this all afternoon?”

  Sasha shrugs. “I wondered the same thing. How do you expect to do the prep that only you can do, if you don’t let go of some of the responsibilities others can do for you? The habits that got you this far in politics aren’t going to keep you going if you want to be vice president.”

  I grind my teeth to bite back a curse. “I’m not the Bionic Woman. I need sleep. I need … food.” My stomach rumbles with hunger to confirm this.

  “Call Trey and have him grab you a sandwich. I want to see the speech in my inbox by midnight, or else I’m going to sic our writers on it. Got it?”

  “You can’t.” I want to dig in my heels, but I feel Sasha rapidly tipping me, pulling me across the line whether I like it or not.

  “I can and I have. I’ve got a writer on standby for midnight. That’s when I’m going to pull the trigger. Either we’re going to polish and review, or we’re going to write it for you outright. You’ve got two days until this speech and four days until the debate. We’re not going to waste them.”

  ***

  “Grace?” Trey’s voice is hesitant and his hand rests lightly on my shoulder. My head snaps up and my neck screams with a painful twinge.

  “What are you doing here?” I blink, my eyes gritty with sleep.

  Trey takes in the screensaver moving across my monitor, the papers strewn across my desk. “That’s what I came to ask you. I saw the light on. It’s late.”

  I slam my index finger on the space bar of my keyboard and look at the time. Quarter ’til ten. “Shit. I almost slept through my deadline.”